


Sooner or Later It Comes Down to Fate

by Deifire



Category: Only The Good Die Young - Melissa Etheridge
Genre: Coming of Age, F/F, Near Future, Pre-Apocalypse, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-07-10 17:27:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6997801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deifire/pseuds/Deifire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Virginia's mom doesn't like me much...The fact that the glass she gives me along with our after school snack is secretly filled with holy water is a dead giveaway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sooner or Later It Comes Down to Fate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [within_a_dream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/within_a_dream/gifts).



Virginia’s mom doesn’t like me much. Virginia herself says it's not true, but if I couldn't tell by the way Mrs. Callahan’s face scrunches up every time she looks at me, or by the way every conversation always winds up on the subject of sinners and sin, well, the fact that the glass she gives me along with our after school snack is secretly filled with holy water is a dead giveaway.

She doesn’t know I know this.

She’s watching to see what reaction I’ll have as I take a big drink, and can’t quite hide her disappointment when it’s merely to say, “Thanks, Mrs. Callahan” before I follow Virginia to her bedroom.

Virginia’s bedroom, where I’m still allowed only because Virginia’s mom still hasn’t figured out the real reason I bother her. 

Officially, it's my friends. I’m a member of a bad crowd, and am therefore a bad influence. One who is going to lead her daughter straight down the path to eternal damnation. This despite the fact, as Virginia has repeated in more than one tear-filled argument she's had with her parents in the weeks since we’ve started hanging out, I have yet to influence her to do one single thing that goes against her strict moral upbringing.

Even after last night, this is still mostly true.

Dammit.

My own mom says I should be patient. Back in their day, she reminds me, people used to worry about who their kids' friends were, but never that they were something other than human. And okay, the thing is, there are some members of my aforementioned bad crowd who might not have been able to pass the holy water test. I mean, Sam’s eyes glow in the dark when he’s not paying attention, which we all pretend to ignore. John was dead and buried for a few days after his accident last July, but it’s not like you can even tell now. Amy, if her own backstory can be believed, is the product of a one-night stand between an art school student and a member of the Unseelie Court that took place approximately seventeen years ago, back when the world was still getting used to suddenly becoming so blantantly magical.

Among my own crowd, I'm actually the ordinary one. Something that Virginia's mom should have been able to figure out already.

Just a mostly ordinary girl who is hopelessly infatuated with her daughter.

This is not a possibility that has occurred to Virginia’s mom yet. Right now, the creature of darkness theory having been discarded, she’s back to worrying about my influence leading Virginia to get in trouble with boys. Not that Virginia’s actually looked twice at any boy ever, but Virginia’s mom had her own indiscretion with a guy named William back when she was about our age, something she still isn’t quite sure God has forgiven her for, so she worries about her own daughter heading down the same path.

This is another thing she doesn’t know I know.

I make sure to "accidentally" brush against the crucifix hanging in the hallway just so her mom can be further disappointed by the complete lack of reaction.

When we get to her room, Virginia closes the door behind us. I sprawl out on the bed, and she joins me, very carefully not coming into contact with me at all as she perches on the opposite edge of the lacy pink comforter. Her entire room is a study in various shades of pink, the sort of girl's bedroom that was decorated in lace and stuffed animals back when she was younger and hasn't changed at all in the years since.

“So,” she says, toying with the gold cross around her neck like she does when she's nervous. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I don’t. I really don’t.

***

I know all sorts of things most people don't. That and chili cheese fries are how I wound up falling for a straight Catholic girl in the first place.

The short version of a long story is that my friends and I have never felt the need to waste time with classes that bore us, which meant there was always a group of us hanging out either in or just outside the coffee house when the Catholic school down the block let out. 

I’d noticed her before. Virginia, I mean. I can't say what it was about her that made her stand out from the crowd of girls, all clad in the same pressed white blouses and plaid skirts who would stream past on the sidewalk every weekday just after three o’clock. Maybe something about her long, auburn curls, or the way the left corner of her mouth crooked up when she smiled. Maybe it was something about the way her eyes caught mine the few times she noticed me noticing her.

That day, the day Virginia officially met, there was something different that drew my attention. I was sitting at one of the tables outside with John and Amy when she walked past us and stopped at the corner to say goodbye to her two friends.

I was staring so intently that I didn’t hear John talking to me until he smacked the back of my head. “Stop drooling, Mel,” he said.

“I wasn’t…” I started to protest. My eyes refocused as I looked back at the girl.

Shit.

That was what was different.

Today, she was going to die.

She’d finish saying her goodbyes, split off from her friends, and turn the corner. Three blocks up, she would shortcut through an alley she’d taken hundreds of times before. Only this time…

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I was unarmed, save maybe my guitar case, which might make a weapon of sorts, but would also likely slow me down.

It was instinct that made me grab the basket of chili cheese fries Amy had just ordered as rent for our paying-customers-only table, and ignore her “Hey!” as I sprinted after the girl.

I caught up with her just as she turned into the alley.

“Wait!” I called, too late.

Sure enough, there was something there. Specifically, a set of glowing eyes, attached to a large, growling shape.

Hellhound. One of the more deadly species of urban pest to have emerged from the shadows in the past couple of decades. It had already locked eyes with the girl.

The gold cross around her neck was glowing.

Shit.

“Hey!” I yelled, followed by a loud whistle. Once I was sure I had its attention, I threw the basket of fries over its head as far as I could.

It turns out hellhounds really like chili cheese fries. At least, more than they like the souls of true believers, which my new companion obviously was.

I took her hand, and together we backed out of the alley, and ran, only stopping when were out of breath and it was obvious nothing was after us.

“Thanks,” she said, turning to me at last. “I’m Virginia.”

“Mel,” I said. “I was…I mean…”

She smiled, in an obvious attempt not to look terrified. “Want to walk me home?”

I smiled back, hoping I was doing a better job at concealing what I was feeling. "Might as well. Safety in numbers, right?" 

After that, I was pretty much lost.

***

“Do you believe in God?” Virginia asks me, now, in her bedroom.

I shrug. It’s a conversation we’ve had too many times before. Maybe there’s a god, or a lot of gods, or no god. I’m not sure it really matters. What it comes down to is I couldn’t care less about whether He (or She, or It, or They) has an opinion on my sex life.

Or rather, my recent complete lack of sex life.

“But you do have faith in something, right?” she persists. "I know you do."

I don’t, actually. I mean, I know as well as anyone else faith works for the faithful. Holy water, sacred ground, any of a thousand different symbols in the hands of the right believer, all of these are powerful stuff. Thing is, it doesn’t seem to matter _which_ faith, just that you really believe it, which makes me highly suspicious of anybody claiming to have any sort of definitive answers when it comes to the Almighty. And no, nothing works for me.

Plus, it’s hard to know what I know and want to have anything to do with a deity who refuses to give an explanation.

“I mean, your gift,” she says, when I don’t answer. 

I groan, and pull one of her pink lace bed pillow over my face. I refuse to call it a "gift." Sometimes, I know things. Things that have happened. Things that are going to happen. Sometimes, if I see a thing coming, I can change it. That’s all.

The next thing I know, she’s going to be quoting the Bible at me. You know, that verse in Acts about sons and daughters prophesying, and people seeing visions, and how I'm just another thing that proves we’re all living in the end times.

I’m not sure any of this is proof of anything. I mean, there’ve been people claiming to to do what I do for centuries. Just like there have been fairy tales, and stories about demons, magic, gods, things coming back from the dead...just because you see more of that sort of thing on the news nowadays doesn’t make it the end of the world.

Really, the people who say this is the end of days have no more proof that's true than all the other people who’ve said the same thing in every era of history before this one.

It's probably just coincidence that this time they’re right.

Yeah.

Here's the thing: the world ends. Soon. I don’t know exactly how or why and I don't know exactly when, but it happens.

Anything further off than the immediate future tends to come to me as a series of possibilities. Most of the time, I get to live until I’m a lot older than I am now, lines on my face and streaks of gray beginning to appear in my hair. Sometimes, before it's all over, I’m in love. Sometimes I’m alone. Sometimes I'm successful, and sometimes not. Sometimes I can tell I've tried to fight the end, and sometimes I've just let it happen. There are even possibilities where I do something stupid like cross the street against the light, or--in one of the more embarrassing futures I've glimpsed for myself--trip over a pile of dirty laundry on the way to meet the pizza guy and sustain a fatal head wound on the edge of the coffee table, and I don't get to be around for Earth's final curtain call.

But the one thing I am certain of is that some time up ahead, within my mortal lifespan, the world comes to a sudden and very abrupt fiery halt.

It should probably bother me more than it does.

I don't know. I guess it's like knowing you're going to die any other way. Most of the time, when you're seventeen, it's a long way off and there are so many other things to do and think about.

For example, how I've known ever since that first meeting that there was always one possible, perfect near future where I'm kissing Virginia and she's kissing me.

I just don’t know how to find it from where we are now.

***

After that first time, I walked Virginia home every day. Our friendship mostly existed in the space of those few moments, and in the hour or so Mrs. Callahan was willing to tolerate my presence in her house.

Outside of that, we just didn’t fit into each other’s worlds. Her school friends weren’t sure what to make of me, I could tell. Like Virginia's mom, they mostly tried to avoid talking to me directly. There was one girl on the edges of their social circle, the type who wore her skirt a little shorter than most and her uniform as disheveled as she could get away with, who gave me a look a time or two as if she knew what I was trying not to feel for Virginia.

She wasn't allowed to go to my house. I tried bringing her to the coffee shop, since it was at least a public and quasi-respectable place, but _my_ friends weren’t sure what to make of _her_ , and it didn’t help that she didn’t really talk to them, either. She’d just sit sipping coffee or soda and sometimes drawing in her sketchbook pretending to ignore whatever salacious story my nearest and dearest were telling.

They were going on about some pawn shop that only existed when the moon was full and the extremely amorous young women Sam claimed to have met there and taken home, when I realized she was sketching me. She showed me the page. Me with my head resting on one hand, eating a fry, the bland expression on my face one I recognized from having carefully cultivated it in a mirror for those occasions when I didn't want to let on that I knew something somebody was telling me was complete bullshit. She smiled and passed me the sketchbook. I flipped through it. Most of its pages were filled with sketches of people. Virginia's mom, sitting at the Callahan’s kitchen table, looking tired. The old lady who always sat in the inside right corner booth, nursing a single cup of coffee she paid for with exact change. Our favorite barista laughing with a customer. Me.

A lot of me, actually. Me playing my guitar. Me on Virginia’s bed doing homework. Me, looking off into the distance at something and smiling.

When I looked up at her, she was looking at me with an expression I knew how to read on anybody else's face but Virginia's. I tried to ignore the way her hand lingered on mine when I passed the sketchbook back to her.

I tried to tell myself I believed there was no chance she felt the same way about me that I felt about her.

I mean, the very first thing I ever knew about her was that she was Catholic. The second was that she well and truly believed. Somewhere along the way, in the course of our conversations, I also received confirmation that she was both straight and "saving herself" for holy matrimony.

Still, there was a future where there was, at the very least, a kiss...

Due do the circumstances of our meeting, she was probably the first person I cared about in years who learned about my so-called "gift" for knowing things well in advance of my sexuality. I'd somehow even convinced my friends to keep mostly quiet. A couple of days after the sketchbook incident I managed to get around to it in the most convoluted way possible, telling a story where I worked in a few stealth references to an ex-girlfriend and some past lovers, before she finally caught on.

“Are you saying that you…?” she started.

“Yeah,” I said, when the pause had gone on long enough. I shrugged, to show how big a deal it wasn't.

"I see," she said, and kept walking.

Which was fine. Wonderful. I could have left it at that.

Except for some reason, I felt the need to ask if it bothered her.

"No," she said. "It's just that...I'm not."

"I know," I said.

"And you probably shouldn't tell my mother," she added. 

"Right," I said. It wasn't something I was planning on doing anyway.

And we probably still would have been fine, except for some reason, she'd felt the need to defend her mom then, and went into a long rambling explanation about how while she, Virginia, would never judge me--I was her friend, after all, and she loved me, just not in _that_ way--God, whose opinion I definitely hadn't asked for, had some pretty strong things to say on the subject, and while Mrs. Callahan loved sinners, that love might not extend to letting them spend time in her house around her daughter.

We wound up in the inevitable ridiculous argument.

“You're my friend,” she’d insisted, for the thousandth time. “But that doesn't mean I’m going to agree with you. Even if I did feel…it's a sin, Mel.”

I rolled my eyes. “Everything’s a sin, ‘Gin. I mean, isn't that how it works? Sex is a sin. Cursing is a sin. Disobeying your parents is a sin. Getting _yourself_ off is a sin. Living’s a sin.”

She looked exasperated. “That’s not what I… _living_ is not a sin,” she said.

“How would you know? It’s not like you’ve ever lived,” I said.

“Just because I don’t live like you?” she asked.

“You go to school, you go home, and you go to church,” I said. “You hide from the big, scary world. You’ll do this until you’re old enough to be out from under your parents’ control. At which point, you'll marry a nice Catholic boy, settle down under _his_ control, and make kids of your own who will live to repeat the entire cycle. You’ll do this because if your life down here is boring enough, your reward is you won’t burn in hell for all eternity. That’s not living. That’s existing until the clock runs out.”

“Whereas you would rather burn, I take it?” she said, her expression unreadable.

“Everything burns,” I said. I wasn’t even raising my voice at that point, just stating a fact, but she'd stepped back like I'd shouted at her. “I just want to live while I'm actually still here.”

“I know my faith must seem stupid to you,” she began.

“It’s not stupid to me. It’s…you’re…you know what? Never mind,” I said, and walked away.

It wasn’t. Virginia’s faith was as much a part of Virginia as anything else. But it wasn’t real to me, either. Not in the way it was to her. Which was why I should have stayed away.

I've never been good at doing what I should do.

***

“Do you not believe in any sort of life beyond this one?” she asks me, now, in her bedroom.

I'm not sure how to answer. I mean, these days you can run into revenants at the corner grocery, and have members of the undead in the same after school club. I’ve never personally had any special insight about the afterlife, but I know people who’ve been there, and they don’t talk about a heaven or a hell, just about quiet and dark and nothing.

Nothing would be a kind of heaven, I suppose. A kind of peace, at any rate. Not what I’ve ever wanted.

“I don’t know,” I say, at last.

We’re not doing anything but hurting each other at this point. She won’t be with me in the here and now, and I won’t be with her in heaven. It’s time to cut our losses.

***

I stayed away from her for two days. On the third, I met her at the corner just past the school and pulled her aside.

“I’m sorry,” I said, in the general direction of the lamp post, not quite daring to look at her.

“I’m sorry, too,” she said, staring at her own shoes. Then, “Want to walk me home?”

“Sure." 

We were silent until we were about a block from her door. What I did then was completely unreasonable and unfair. “A bunch of us are going to Otherworld tonight,” I said, naming a club that had just opened downtown. “You can come with us if you want.”

“I can’t,” she said, automatically.

“If you can’t, you can’t,” I said. “But say we die tomorrow. Would you rather spend your last night on Earth in your room?”

She gave me a pointed look. “ _Do_ we die tomorrow?”

I shrugged. “Probably not,” I said. Then I smiled. “But you never know. Look, I’ll be here at ten. If you want to come with, meet me outside. If not, no big deal.” We were at her door, so with that, I turned around and walked away before she could reply.

When I showed up outside Virginia’s building later that night, there was no one there to meet me.

There was, however, a light on in Virginia’s room.

I stood staring up at it for a few moments, before a hand brushed the curtain aside. She stared down at me for a long moment, without speaking. Then she said, “Give me a second” before disappearing back inside.

The next thing I knew, she was climbing out the window, down the fire escape, wearing heels and a rose colored dress I hadn’t even realized she owned.

When she reached the ground, we grinned at each other.

“This could be dangerous,” she whispered.

“Could be,” I agreed, in the same whispered tone.

“Do you even know what’s out there in the dark?” she asked.

“Not most of the time, no,” I replied. “Want to find out?”

She took my hand, and together we ran off into the night.

The club was too loud, and the band predictably mediocre, but I didn’t care. I got us sodas from the bar—underage drinking was a vice that could wait for another night, I told myself—and we sat sipping them down to ice, before I finally pulled her out onto the dance floor when the band was playing something fast. Virginia could dance, I discovered. The gold cross around her neck was glowing slightly, in response to what, I wasn’t sure, and the way it illuminated her face was beautiful.

When the song switched to something slow, she was the one who pulled me into her arms. It was one of the few times in my life I'd ever been genuinely shocked. We danced together until the song was almost over, when she leaned forward to brush her lips against mine.

I was too shocked to even respond before she abruptly pulled away. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I can’t.”

“It’s okay,” I told her.

It wasn’t, of course, but there was nothing else to say. By unspoken mutual agreement, we left soon after.

I thought about going back to the club once she was safely back home. I didn’t. Just went back to my place—through the front door, because my own mother wasn’t even home to disturb, let alone enforce the curfew I’d never had—and cried myself to sleep.

***

Virginia’s saying something else about God and salvation and right and wrong and I don’t want to let her know I’ve stopped listening. When this is over, I’m going to walk out of this room and go back to my normal life with my friends and my music and no more straight girls. “So what I'm trying to say is,” Virginia is saying, “even if I wanted to, I couldn’t…” She pauses, looks at me for a long moment, and then says, “Oh, damn it!”

Before I can express my utter astonishment that a curse word has just left Virginia’s perfect lips, they’re on mine. She’s kissing me, and I’m kissing her back, and it’s everything I’ve ever known this possible, perfect future would be.

There are sometimes limits to what I know.

For example, my knowledge does not extend to the part where she’s practically in my lap,I’ve got one hand wound in her hair, and another on her upper thigh, almost under her skirt, when her mother barges into the room.

There’s a scene. It’s ugly. At the end of it, I’m informed I’m no longer welcome in the Callahan home or anywhere near Virginia.

***

If I believed in eternal salvation, there’s nothing I could offer Virginia that would be worth giving it up.

If I’m honest with myself, I don’t know if what I feel for her is love, lust, or something that’s both of those. I’m not sure if it even matters.

I’ve spent the past several hours since being kicked out of the Callahans’ wandering around the city, trying to see a future from here. 

I can’t. Or rather, I see a thousand of them, but not whether or not there’s one where she and I are together.

It’s dark now as I approach Virginia's building. I have no idea what I’m doing or what I'm going to say.

I begin the climb up to Virginia’s window.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for the excellent prompts! I had all your requested songs on a playlist for a bit, so there are some places in where some of the others didn't quite cross over, but maybe bled through here a little.


End file.
